Prodrive Mini WRC

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Originally Posted by GigiGalliNo1

Mentos will do 2013 season excluding Monte with S2000 MINI JCW car! Prodrive is supporting their cars fully for their campaign.

Dynamic is also sponsoring Polish driver. Uncertain if S2000 MINI or WRC

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Koscziscko is doing Monte Carlo in a WRC spec Mini (not sure if it will be 01A or 01B), but it used to be a Motorsport Italia car. I have no idea what other events he is doing after that.

Does anyone know what Sandell and the Sweden team are doing? They were fun for the 2 events they did in 2012...

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Originally Posted by Prisoner Monkeys

I think the problem with Mini is that the idea of getting the marque back into the WRC was stronger than the reality of it.

For instance, I saw this in my home town a few days ago, a Fiat Ritmo (I think it's sold elsewhere as a Fiat Bravo):

http://images.drive.com.au/drive_ima...tRitmo_m_m.jpg

And I thought to myself "Hey, that would make a great little rally car! I wonder if Fiat would be interested?" (whether or not they actually would be interested is not the point, so please, bear with me for now). But I don't think that happened with Mini. I think someone thought to themselves "Hey, could we get Mini back into rallying? And if so, which car could we use?", which to my mind is doing things in the wrong order.

I think the Countryman was the wrong car for Mini to use. Like the Suzuki SX4 before it, it simply looks too big to be a rally car (although its not as bad as the SX4). I think it was the wrong car to use, and I'm not sure if there was ever a right car to use. I can't help but think that the decision to get Mini back into the WRC was made for the wrong reasons - for sentimentality, rather than because the car was good for competition.

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I understand what you are saying. I think the Countryman was the best car for BMW to use, the other Mini Cooper was too small apparently (well according to DR). Don't forget Prodrive ran some M3's in the late 1980s-early 1990s so BMW-Prodrive is a relationship with some history.

Perhaps it was the best car for them to use, but the decision to get Mini involved in the first place felt like a decision that was made for the wrong reasons.

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Originally Posted by GigiGalliNo1

Prodrive is supporting their cars fully for their campaign.

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Prodrive already supported WRC Team Mini Portugal (aka Motorsport Itália) during all the 2012 season.

The Mentos team is the Motorpsort Itália sructure. Bruno found another guy with money to burn...

Team Mentos and Team Lotos are both run by Motorsport Italia? so they have minimum 3 cars in 2013 (2x S2000 and 1x WRCar)

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Originally Posted by alleskids

Team Mentos and Team Lotos are both run by Motorsport Italia? so they have minimum 3 cars in 2013 (2x S2000 and 1x WRCar)

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I think they had a total of 5 Mini's.

As I know, Mentos team will run their MINIs by themself, not by MI and they will get full support from Prodrive.

I think what Prodrive has done with the car development was really good, and Dani's Sordo times in last season at some stages says the car got the potential to compete with the rest. Now, alot says here in this forum, that some members of Prodrive WRC team mechs and engineeers left for VW. I hope Prodrive still got some good individuals with the team that can further develope the car into a tier 1 car, like citroen and ford.

Last rally of the season proved that car has tarmac potential in the hands of top driver.

does anyone know the program that will run the Mini rally team RCC Ascania Mentos?